On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Mohit Sharma <[email protected]> wrote: [...] > exactly, that's what I want to say. when these pages are editable then > what makes these articles so authentic ? As Mani said "Plenty of > misinformation (including statistics) does get in and people do not > care to correct them." There are equal probability of being this > misinformation there by mistake or intensionally but misinformation is > misinformation. I do agree there can be some moderators who are doing > there great job but when it comes to the sensitive information like > information regarding any nation or territory, how can a wrong > information be there. As you can see the page about Mr. Manmohan Singh > is edited last time on 18th feb., 3 days back, I guess enough time to > circulate a wrong information about him. What in that case ?
Just a query, are you looking for a solution or simply musing over the lack of reliability in Wikipedia? When using Wikipedia, do not assume it to be the last and authoritative source of information. That would just be lazy on your part. Once you get to an article, you might want to cross check the sources that it cites at the bottom of an article. If there are not enough cited resources for particular facts then you ought to be wary of the authenticity and take some pains to do some research of your own and verify the content. If you succeed at this, it would be best to add this information, correct wrong information and cite it with appropriate references. Give back to the community. These citations help and thats what they are for. After all, most information has some source or the other. There is a vicious cycle here, the source of the information that was cited may be incorrect as well. This brings you down to the level of a typo/mistake in a printed book as well. What do you do then? Many experts would probably laugh at someone quoting Wikipedia as their source of information. You have to go an extra mile to know whether your knowledge is accurate. Wrong knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge. 3 days is enough time to circulate wrong information. But not if the reader is well aware of the above points. Take an informed decision before you accept any knowledge as authoritative. I'll just leave this link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est Regards n9986 -- LUG@IITD - http://tinyurl.com/ycueutm
